Poetry at Its Finest – Soul-Searching Experiences

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words,” said Edgar Allan Poe. I don’t think I have ever heard truer words. In high school, it’s practiced that as students we learn Shakespeare’s sonnets or Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” but it’s not highlighted that there are so many more forms of poetry, poetry that doesn’t have to be about learning a language for a required credit but rather loving language for the emotion it creates. 

There’s a world of poetry that hasn’t been experienced throughout educational systems. In my opinion, it’s a disservice to students everywhere, especially because there is so much you can explore through poetry. As a student, I was bored at the creative outlets that I experienced in my school through writing. Even though I knew that I loved to write, there wasn’t a way I could express what I wanted to say through how I was learning to write in school. The writing that I learned was cyclical, something that trapped me inside a box of corporate America. I resorted to writing when I was younger because I couldn’t find the courage to speak with people, my words translated what my shyness wouldn’t and it frustrated me, as a student and artist, that I couldn’t find the words yet again because of the box of language that high school deemed was necessary for my future. 

It was never an option to pursue Creative Writing and I stuck myself out on a limb when I clicked the box in my college applications for that major. I had never formally learned what Creative Writing was, what poetry could mean to me, but I knew that I was never going to be happy pursuing something that was typical, something ingrained in an image of success that didn’t align with my image. It’s a privilege to pursue an education in something that is just a passion of mine and a giant risk, but it’s also a choice that I would never trade. We live in a world where success is built on a money-driven industry, that an individual cannot reach their full potential without an income and a motivation to be a billionaire. A concept, just like perfection, is a failure waiting to happen because of how different everyone’s image is on this beautiful planet. 

People say money can’t buy you happiness, but they never ask what life is without passion. 

Passion is to pursue multiple paths in your present that will make the best for your future. My future was not predestined into an image, but rather written as poetry, the letters in my bloodstream, reimagined into blooming words on paper that create whatever I want it to. It’s freeing to know the possibility of anything. It’s what calls my soul to others, the 26 letters tattooed on my beating heart. My parting question is would you answer the call as well? 

• experience
• growth.
• Journey
• poetry
• soul
• student